This Guy from Chandigarh is on a Mission to Revolutionize the Indian Education System & It’s a Great Step

At present, Entrepreneurs have a huge number of reasons which driving them, like for many of them, money is the motivation while some want to become popular. However, Akshay Ahuja is amongst those entrepreneurs who want to bring a change in the lives of children. He started RoboChamps at the age of 19, and after that relentlessly working for the past 4 years to make practical education a reality. RoboChamps vision is to bring change in the education sector by introducing ‘Hands-On Practice’. This is the new methodology for teaching which allows students to learn and understand science, mathematics and technology by using Robotics. Students perform individual projects using different tools of Robotics to understand these concepts. After the inclusion of smart classes, ‘Hands on Practice’ should be introduced to make impactful change in education sector. “Teacher explaining the subjects on board is not longer any effective medium, whereas actually after seeing how these concepts work in real life students gets real learning.” With Robotics, students become more innovative and develop a habit of curiosity to learn more and more

RoboChamps-Fast forward a few years, and RoboChamp’s has reached so many students, probably highest in this country. Till date, they have reached more than 20,000 students across the country. They have conducted workshops in more than 500 schools. The figure for total number of workshops that have been conducted across India is more than 1000, which include workshops in schools, slum areas and at their academy. RoboChamps has also worked extensively to do its bit for the society. Till date, they have provided more than 200 An alumnus of Chitkara University, his start-up journey started in the second year of college. He undertook two projects at that time. The first was a summer camp for school students. They taught these students some basic about circuits and other electronic related concepts. The second initiative was a six week industrial training for B.Tech students. After the efforts of RoboChamps team, 29 B. tech students from all across Chandigarh took part in this training . Students were taught the use and functioning of ATMEGA 8 IC technology, an integrated circuit which is M.tech level studies. At that time, RoboChamps team did not even had an office. These students were trained at the roof of a building that was under construction! What Ahuja also noticed was that the pace at which the kids at the summer camp were learning was faster than the ones at which our trainees at the industrial training were learning. This led him to conduct a small experiment. He put one of the kids from the summer workshop, Aryaman Verma in the industrial program with the B.Tech students. At the end of the training period, what Ahuja observed was that this 9 year old kid had learnt the ATMEGA 8 IC technology better than the B. Tech students! This led me to the conclusion that all the kids are like an empty hard drive, and the software our education system has installed in them is a pirated one. After that incident, He decided to start robotics training for students, and started introducing them to the effective teaching methodology of ‘Hands on Practice’.

Free Training Sessions In Slum Areas

These workshops have covered more than 1000 children from the underprivileged section. Back in 2013, they started with a team of 3 members. At present, they have a team of 25 working in the head office and 27 more working in different cities of North India.

Several of the students at RoboChamps have already made national records. Tushaar Sarin, a 13 year old entered the Limca book of records for making 12 robots using ATMEGA 8 IC technology. He is the youngest in the country to do so. Another of their students, Aryaman Verma became the youngest person in the country to make a line following robot, achieving this feat at an age of 9.

And the future of the company is even brighter. The biggest highlight of the plans for the upcoming months is the Build Your Bot event. The event is set to take place in the month of August where more than 20,000 students will share the stage to create their own line following robots. Several hundred underprivileged kids will also be participating in this event which is free. “This event is the first of its kind in the country and is surely going to be the country’s biggest ever robotics event. In fact, we will be contacting the officials from the Guiness Book of World’s records in hope of breaking the world record. We are extremely confident of breaking the same. The event will take place in Gurgaon and we are in talks with Mr. Manohar Lal Khattar, Chief minister of Haryana as well as PM Narendar Modi to grace the event as chief guests.”

Akshay Ahuja does not plan to stop there. Before the end of 2016, RoboChamps has a mission to open around 32 Robotics academies all across North India. The academies will be opened in cities like Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Bathinda, Amritsar, Chandigarh and its surrounding cities. This will surely go a long way in RoboChamps’ vision of making ‘hands on practice’ dream to turn into reality for every student in this country. If there is any revolution that is brewing in the education sector today, it is the one led by RoboChamps.

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Ajay Mittal is a young and dynamic individual who loves to work with startups. He is always excited to try new things. With the passion for events and a heart for storytelling, he never misses any chance to entertain people. From Mechanical Engineering to Music, Marketing to Travelling, he enjoys everything, almost!
Did we tell you? He travelled to Shimla in just 30 Rupees. Yes!
You may reach him at cmo@chandigarhmetro.com